Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
Baxter was sitting at the large leather-topped desk in the study at Villa Sérénité, his laptop open. In a large chesterfield armchair on the other side of the room, Kaitlyn’s knees were drawn up to her chest like a child’s.
“Anything?” She rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand. Her face was pink and puffy, tear streaks running in parallel lines down her cheeks.
“The airlines are always very busy during the film festival.” Baxter clicked the mouse. “Perhaps British Airways …”
“I’ll pay whatever it takes. Well …” Kaitlyn gave a short laugh. “Alec will. He gave me his credit card to go shopping in town.” Her chin wobbled. “I can’t believe he’s been lying to me all this time.”
“It must be very upsetting for you,” Baxter said mildly. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about Kaitlyn’s plight (on the contrary, he felt an almost paternal rage toward Alec Prescott), but a butler was expected to be Switzerland: entirely neutral in times of conflict.
“He can pay for my flight home, but then I won’t take another penny off him.” Kaitlyn’s bravado was unconvincing. “I was doing fine before I met him. I don’t need him.”
“And the baby?” Baxter said gently. Kaitlyn’s hands moved to her stomach, tears quivering on her lower lashes.
Baxter made a snap decision. He was honest to a fault, but his position occasionally demanded what might be termed a “white lie,” told for the greater good.
His first live-in position had been for Lady Pletherington-Smythe, who would insist on “just one more cognac” with the same vigor with which her stomach would invariably reject it half an hour later. “My apologies, madam,”
Baxter took to telling her, “I’m afraid the bottle is empty.” Since Lady P-S never remembered the following morning, it had seemed a harmless enough way to save the bedroom carpet.
Baxter looked Kaitlyn in the eye. “It seems today’s flights are all sold out.”
“The train, then,” Kaitlyn said. “I could go to Paris and take the Eurostar.”
“Also sold out.” Baxter understood the young woman’s urge to run, but while she might think she could manage without Alec Prescott’s money, that was a decision she needed to think through.
It was none of Baxter’s business, of course, but it was in his nature to side with the underdog.
What felt like brave independence now would be woven with regret in a few months’ time when Kaitlyn was struggling to bring up a child on a part-time beautician’s wage.
“There is an empty bedroom at the end of the corridor,” Baxter said. “Would you like me to make it up for you?”
Kaitlyn nodded, resigned.
She stayed in her room for the rest of the day. Alec took the Porsche into town, throwing up a cloud of dirt as he disappeared down the hillside. Carter and Jade remained on the terrace, their conversation occasionally drifting across to where Baxter was refreshing the loungers.
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Jade said, a hard edge to her voice. “This is the first time I’ve met him. And to be honest, even that feels like one too many …”
“Hey!” Carter’s voice carried. “I didn’t hear you complaining when I offered you a free week in the South of France.”
“I didn’t know your dad was a fucking megalomaniac then.”
Baxter retreated indoors where Sylvie and Francesca had installed themselves on the sectional with a bottle of Beaujolais, busy outlining precisely why men were so awful.
“Present company excepted,” Sylvie said as Baxter placed a lacquered bowl full of olives on the coffee table.
“You’re too kind, madam.” He set down a silver cocktail stick holder and a dish for the stones. “Can I get you anything else? Some coffee, perhaps?” he added pointedly. The insides of Sylvie’s lips were stained purple.
“Just some more wine, please.” She turned back to Francesca. “I don’t know how I stayed married to him so long. Although …” An impish grin played across her lips. “He did do this thing …” She leaned forward and whispered.
Francesca squealed and covered her face in mock horror. “Stop! I’m not going to be able to look at him without thinking about that!” She pulled a face. “Mind you, I’m impressed the two of you were still at it after so many years. Impressed … and a little envious.”
“Having a dry spell?” Sylvie arched a brow.
“Positively Saharan.” Francesca sighed. “I’d hoped this trip might revive things, but …
” She shrugged. Baxter uncorked the wine with a loud pop.
It was quite extraordinary, the things people said in front of their domestics.
Baxter knew far too much about his clients’ habits and predilections, from their hidden eating disorders to their bedroom preferences.
The Ashcombes had slept in separate rooms unless they had guests, when Baxter would be asked to move Lord Ashcombe’s things into his wife’s bedroom.
“She doesn’t want people to gossip,” Lord Ashcombe—Hugo—had told Baxter after their kitchen sink kiss. “There’s been nothing between us for years.”
“Does she … know?” Baxter’s hand was resting lightly on Hugo’s belt, his heart beating so loudly he felt it would wake the whole household.
“I tried to tell her once, but she changed the subject. Appearances are very important to her.”
“More important than happiness?”
“I think she is happy.” Hugo had shrugged. “You know what they say: Ignorance is bliss.”
“And you?” Baxter leaned back slightly, searching Hugo’s face. “Are you happy?”
A slow smile had spread over the other man’s face. He pulled Baxter close. “I am now.”
“I’d go mad if I didn’t have regular bedroom action,” Sylvie was telling Francesca. Ah, but whose bedroom, Baxter thought as he dutifully poured more wine. He wondered how long Sylvie had been sleeping with Damian, and whether she felt any remorse at betraying a good friend.
Sylvie took a swig of her wine. “Tell me more about The Glass Veil.”
Francesca’s face lit up. “The script is incredible. It’s been critically acclaimed, but it’s what the critics are calling a ‘quiet’ film.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means art house cinemas, not movie theaters. Reviews in Cineaste rather than Variety. But Damian’s new project is seriously commercial, Sylvie. It’s got everything: glamor, murder, hot cops …”
“It sounds fabulous.”
“Would you speak to Alec?”
“Me?” Sylvie laughed. “He won’t listen to me, darling!”
“Please?” There was a note of vulnerability Baxter hadn’t previously heard from Francesca.
Sylvie must have noticed it too. She surveyed Francesca for a moment, then she nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
Alec didn’t come back to the villa till early evening, arriving in a taxi and slurring at Baxter to pay for it.
His eyes were drooping and bloodshot, and there was a smear of lipstick on his jowly chin.
“Thought I’d better not drive.” He fumbled the Porsche key from his pockets and clumsily bowled it at Baxter, who caught it deftly.
“Very wise, sir. Where did you park?”
“God knows.” Alec stumbled off in the direction of his bedroom.
Baxter allowed himself the smallest of sighs. He would deal with the Porsche in the morning.
On the menu for that evening was plaice with slow-cooked fennel and saffron tomato vierge, but gathering all seven guests around a table that evening felt not only unlikely, but positively unwise.
Baxter instructed Thierry to instead prepare a selection of cold meats and salads that could be served buffet-style, at each guest’s convenience.
“At this rate, they won’t last the week,” Thierry said, putting the plaice in the freezer.
Miriam huffed. “Good. They are all rotten.”
“If they leave early, they won’t tip.”
“Is that all you think about?” Miriam put her hands on her hips. “Money, money, money … It’s all right for you—you don’t have to speak to them. You don’t have the men staring at you like they want to eat you.”
Thierry turned to face her, a wooden chopping board held midair. “Which men?”
Miriam turned away. “I was being dramatic. It is not that bad.”
“Which men?” Thierry demanded.
“Miriam.” Baxter stepped between the arguing couple. “I suspect Kaitlyn will not want to leave her room. Perhaps you could take her a plate of food.”
As the housekeeper gratefully escaped, Baxter rubbed away the beginnings of a headache.
It was bad enough to have guests at loggerheads without the staff turning on each other as well.
He would need to speak to Thierry about the ring, but it had to be handled carefully.
If Thierry walked, Miriam would go too, and Baxter would be left with no staff.
If there was a silver lining to the day’s turbulence, it was that all the guests retreated to their rooms early.
By ten o’clock, the villa was silent. Miriam and Thierry had tidied the kitchen before clocking off, and Baxter swiftly restored order to the rooms and terraces.
He poured himself a finger of whiskey and sat for a while in the dimly lit sitting room.
Beyond the sliding glass doors, the hillside was dotted with lights, and far below, Cannes continued to party.
It was light years away from Baxter’s tiny London apartment, but he wouldn’t swap places for the world.
He thought of poor Kaitlyn sobbing herself to sleep, of Francesca sleeping next to her cheating husband.
He thought of Carter’s face when his father dismissed his son’s entrepreneurship as nothing more than a hobby.
These people had everything, yet nothing brought them joy.
Money didn’t buy you happiness; look at Villa Sérénité’s guests.
Look at Lord and Lady Ashcombe, Baxter thought, and the memory brought a sharp pain to his chest.
The affair between Baxter and Hugo had lasted almost six months.
The Ashcombes led such separate lives that it had been easy to be discreet, and there had been times when Baxter could almost fool himself into thinking there was no Lady Ashcombe, that it was just the two of them, talking late into the night in Hugo’s study or lying in his four-poster bed, moonlight falling across the Egyptian cotton sheets.
It had ended as suddenly as it had begun.
Baxter would never know what had given them away—an intimate look? The brush of hands as they passed in the hall?—but, late one night, Lady Ashcombe had appeared at the door to his staff quarters, a sharp rap heralding her arrival.
“You will be gone by the morning,” she had said tightly, unable to meet his eyes.
Baxter could see no pain in her expression, only anger, and yet he felt consumed by guilt. He had nodded. “Can I …” He’d swallowed hard. “May I at least say goodbye?”
“No.” She had gripped the doorframe, her knuckles whitening. “If you contact my husband again, I shall tell the police that you stole several family heirlooms.”
Baxter missed the camaraderie of a busy household, but he wouldn’t take another live-in position. He’d never again stay anywhere long enough to get close to someone. It was better this way.
At Villa Sérénité, he turned off the lights and went to bed, double-checking the locks as he did so.
His room was just as he’d left it—his bed neatly made, his wash things lined up on the bamboo tray next to the basin—but the air felt stale, so he opened the window, letting in a gentle breeze.
He hung his clothes on the valet stand and readied himself for sleep.
He woke disorientated, flung from a dream in which the red-haired pickpocket had been rifling through his wardrobe, and he blinked now in the darkness, some part of his brain still believing it was true.
As his heart rate slowed, he sunk back into his pillow and was drifting off to sleep when he heard a familiar noise.
The hiss was quiet but insistent. It came from somewhere near the ceiling, and it filled Baxter with a cold dread. It was, without a shadow of a doubt, the same sound he had heard two nights ago. The burglars had come back.
Baxter reached for his phone on the nightstand, before remembering he had left it charging in the kitchen.
Should he make a dash for it? Perhaps if he turned on all the lights and made it clear there were people awake …
He swung his legs from the bed, but as he sat up, he heard a dull thud from somewhere within the villa.
Baxter froze, the police officer’s words echoing in his mind. “Should you wake up and hear gas again, play dead. Or that’s exactly how you will end up.”
Staying in bed went against all of Baxter’s instincts.
A butler was not a security officer, but nevertheless he felt a certain responsibility to look after his clients, and it felt so very wrong to be cowering in his room when there were intruders on the property.
But the gendarme’s expression had been gravely serious, and Baxter was not about to find out what would happen if he ventured out of his bedroom.
Another thud. Footsteps, soft and light, in the corridor outside his room.
Slowly, Baxter lay back down. He listened to the hiss from the ceiling and pulled the covers over his face, trying not to breathe in the noxious gas, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. He wondered how many of the guests had woken up. Would they remember the gendarme’s instructions?
As the minutes ticked by, he forced himself to take slow, even breaths, so that if someone were to open the door, they would think him asleep.
Half an hour later, silence had fallen over Villa Sérénité once more.
But Baxter wasn’t awake to hear it.